Legal Drama

2016 · 1 Season · HBO · Crime Drama

The Night Of is one of HBO's finest limited series, a crime drama that uses a murder case to expose the machinery of the American justice system with devastating clarity. Riz Ahmed delivers a career-defining performance as a young man ground down by a system that presumes guilt, and John Turturro matches him as the unglamorous defense attorney carrying the weight of his client's life. The pacing demands patience, particularly in its middle stretch, but the cumulative payoff is a show that lingers in your mind long after the final episode.

2009 · 7 Seasons · CBS · Drama / Legal

The Good Wife opens on a politician's wife standing beside her husband at his scandal press conference, and spends seven seasons turning that silent woman into the most formidable character in the room. Julianna Margulies's Alicia Florrick anchors the case widely made for this as the last great network drama, a show that ran twenty-two episodes a year while out-writing most of cable, with a supporting bench, Josh Charles's Will, Christine Baranski's Diane, Archie Panjabi's Kalinda, and a rotating repertory of judges and rivals, that remains the envy of the form. A shocking mid-series rupture produced its finest hour. The last two seasons and a slap-based finale spend down some goodwill. The peak years remain untouchable.

2007 · Tony Gilroy · 119 min · Thriller, Drama

Michael Clayton is a smart, grown-up thriller about corporate corruption and moral exhaustion, powered by Clooney's finest dramatic performance and a script that trusts its audience to keep up.

2020 · 2 Seasons · HBO · Legal Drama

Perry Mason reimagines the iconic defense attorney as a broken man in Depression-era Los Angeles, and the result is a gorgeous, atmospheric noir that takes its time building both its cases and its characters. Matthew Rhys gives a layered, weary performance that makes the character feel genuinely new. The show's deliberate pacing and dark tone won't appeal to everyone, and the cancellation after two seasons leaves the story frustratingly unfinished, but what exists is some of HBO's most visually stunning period television.

2014 · 6 Seasons · ABC · Drama / Thriller

How to Get Away with Murder runs on two engines, a flash-forward mystery machine that dispenses corpses like clockwork, and Viola Davis delivering a weekly acting masterclass that won her a historic Emmy. As defense attorney and law professor Annalise Keating, Davis builds one of television's most complete characters, brilliant, ruinous, magnetic, and rawly vulnerable, while her five student accomplices stack cover-ups on cover-ups until the bodies practically need a spreadsheet. The twist economy that makes early seasons unputdownable eventually hyperinflates, and consensus finds the back half exhausting. Davis never once is. She's the whole case for the show, and she wins it.